Well certainly less controversial than my last post...... I got my results from the 3x3 Show and was thrilled to see that I had gotten six pieces in the show....Don't think I will dare to mention what I was paid to do them. Sometimes we do work for less than our normal rates; sometimes we do it for the love of being able to create some new exciting creative work that will ultimately bring in some more profitable assignment work. Sometimes we do it because we get a chance to do some more personal work that will be rewarding in and expand us as artists. I wonder what the annuals would look like if they included the fees paid along side the art? An interesting idea....only hypothetically of course....

Here is one of those stories where no good deed goes unpunished. Or is it "Every good deed goes unpublished......" Not to add insult to injury, we all strive to do the best we can, and sometimes........, sometimes they just take a nose dive off a cliff, yelling “Yaw’ll watch this!…” Reportedly the last words heard from a young Alabamian, diving off a 165 foot cliff….. As rescue workers strive to pull him from the water unconscious ,revive him and transfer him to a local hospital to be held for Psychiatric observation, the EMS drivers started wearing Tee shirts that say “We interfere with natural selection.” Sometimes things just take a dive off the cliff into muddied waters.
I had this great cover for Philadelphia Weekly for Beer Week. What could possibly be better…well a budget ( They pay $300. I know the horror) , but besides that. I mean, you got Beer and a great art director that says just “Looking for something light and funny.”

I started with the normal forty thumbnails and She picked the most obvious direction. But keeping simple was really a good idea. I swung by the house to pick up some bottles of Beer to shoot for reference, for Foam, for color…. wanted to do this rather than searching Google, So Forest and I set up a little impromptu photo shoot that took about ten minutes. Now we are left with open bottles of beer at 9:03 in the morning. I have not drank a beer at 9:30 in the morning since spring break, Daytona Beach when I was 16 years old…. So, painfully, we poured the beer down the drain… yes, I know. The horror. You’ll get over it.

BEER reference for color and detail

I did this great little airbrush drawing of a dancing bottle of beer…. Tried it on black like I had originally envisioned but the white was so clean… I decided to leave it on white. Ioana wanted me to fill up the cover a little more so I distorted the beer and added a little spiral behind the mug he was holding. We added the Beer festival logo on the top Mug the beer was holding. Then we are off to Canada, the land of Beer. Where Rogers network makes it impossible to use your USA iPhone without racking up a $500 weekend phone bill. I went to the library in Brighton to check in Monday (Memorial Day) and found a letter from the Art Director about changes… Now they want to put the logo (Huge) on the main bottle. Shook Forest out of Holiday fun to take care of this pretty simple change and sent it off by early Tuesday. On reentering the U.S. Wednesday, and getting a cell signal again, rather than international roaming, I get another email apologizing for the additional changes to the design. “The client is convinced that the beer is drunk…”

The Beer is drunk? Wait a minute, the Beer is Drunk? Yes the beer bottle looks drunk. and the client wants it straight on the page. Actually, Ioana did a great job redesigning the cover based on what she was handed. But THE BEER WAS DRUNK? Here is her note: “Dear Bill, I'm really sorry, but the cover ended being a disaster. The final decision was made by Beer Week, a huge advertisement client of Philadelphia Weekly. they insisted the bottle looked 'drunk' and wanted to have it straight. I didn't have much of a saying in this one, so I had to comply with their demands. The cover doesn't make any sense in the end and your work was totally destroyed. You will, of course get paid, but I wanted to apologize. It never happened before and hope will never happen again.”

The beer is drunk, I told Forest about this he said, “I thought that was the concept, right? A drunk, stumbling beer…”
Funny… I never saw it that way at all.

Deer trail becomes Indian trail becomes county road. General Orders No. 9 provides a history of the state of Georgia, but not in any normal textbook fashion Instead it takes an impressionistic and poetic approach to span the time when Europeans first discovered the land that was then inhabited by Indians to the present day. It's an almost spiritual history shaped by landscape and geography, but as man began to impart his will onto the land, a conflict develops from the scars of war to the development of interstates, which gave rise to the city, which is presented as an abberation, an oppressive machine that works to isolate instead of unifying with a sense of belonging and place. General Orders No. 9 is one last trip down the rabbit hole before it gets paved over. A deep geography. What is above and what is below. What came before and what will come after. Agrarian fantasies, sacrificial rites, and excavations. A story told with maps, dreams, and prayers.
Icons for a Lost Civilization.
New Rose Window
Director Bob Persons
Illustrator Bill Mayer

And here's some details for the upcoming Brooklyn screening: (jealous!) "The film will open at Brooklyn’s reRun Gastropub Theater on June 24th, with expansion to major markets to follow. Select screenings will include a live musical performance of the score. In addition, an art exhibit featuring the director’s collection of artifacts and antique maps, as well as new art made for the film, will tour with the film to select markets."

Adaptation of the lamb and willow for New Rose Window's logo in the film.

This synopsis of No. 9 makes things make so much more sense:

"One last trip down the rabbit hole before it gets paved over. A deep geography. What is above and what is below. What came before and what will come after. Agrarian fantasies, sacrificial rites, and excavations. A story told with maps, dreams, and prayers. A map lesson in three parts. A history of the State of Georgia - or Anywhere. Deer trail becomes Indian trail becomes county road."